Office 365 Exchange Online Migration Scheduling Policy
Contents
1.Introduction
2.Migration Event, Window and Groups
3.Scheduling Guidelines
3.1OBC_Migration_Team_Lockdown_Dates_CY_2015
4.Migration Schedule Templates
4.1Migration Schedule Templates for Exchange Hybrid Migrations
4.1.1Migration Schedule Template for Exchange Hybrid - Direct/Standard Migrations
4.1.2Migration Schedule Template for Exchange Hybrid - SWRC migrations
4.2Migration Schedule Template for Simple MRS
4.3Migration Schedule Template for Staged Migrations
4.4Migration Schedule Template for IMAP Migrations
4.5Migration Schedule Template for Cutover Migrations
4.6Migration Schedule Template for Lotus Notes Migrations
4.7Migration Schedule Template for Gmail
5.How to share migration schedule with migration team
6.Scheduling Tips
1.Introduction
This document contains the information necessary for scheduling mailboxes to be migrated to Office 365. The following sections describe what policies the customer will need to adhere to for scheduling migrations, how the windows (time slots) are allocated and guidance for filling out the migration schedule template.
- The migration program has three windows that migrations occur in with each window has either two or three sub-groups, totaling 8 groups.
- All scheduling is based on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time and day. Daylight saving time (DST) is not considered in this time zone.
- The 3 windows cover 24 hours and the date of the migration is always based on the beginning of the “Window” the group is part of.
- The Migrations would be performed 24x5
- The first ‘Time Slot’ that the Migrations can be scheduled in the week would be Window1Group1 of Monday which starts at 02:00 UTC on Mondays.
- The last ‘Time Slot’ that the Migrations can be scheduled in the week would be Window3Group1 of Friday which starts at 20:00 UTC on Fridays.
2.Migration Event, Window and Groups
Migration Event
- A “migration event” is a batch of mailboxes that are migrated together
- Migration events are scheduled for a given “migration window”
Minimum and Maximum number mailboxes that can be scheduled during an Migration event.
- Please go through the Fast Track Email Migration Offer Description to find out the minimum number of users in each Migration Batch.
- The maximum number of users in each Migration Batch depends on multiple factors such as network throughput (identified during the Assess phase), server performance etc. So this number varies for each customer and is usually identified by the first few Migration events of Velocity Migration.
Migration Date
- Migration Date is the Date that the customer can choose to star the Migration on.
- The Migration Date follows the UTC timezone as it is not impacted by DST and is unique.
- The customers need to conver their local Time Zone date into UTC date while scheduling the Migrations. The “Migration Window Timings and Time Zone Translation” document mentioned later provides a translation of the time zones.
Migration Window
- Migration window a time period customer can choose to start migration.
- For Example, if a customer wants to migrate mailboxes located in USA in non business hours, Window 1 is the most suited migration window.
Migration Group
- Migration Group is the time slot within each window, customer can choose to start migration.
- Each Migration Group corresponds to a specific time slot.
- For Example, if customer want Window 1 for the migration, any of the groups within Window 1 i.e. Window 1 Group 1, Window 1 Group 2 and Window 1 Group 3 can be chosen to start the migrations.
Note: Only one Migration Event (one migration window and group) can be scheduled per day for each region (US, EMEA and APJ) for customers.
ALL TIMES ARE IN UTC and does not change with DST
/ Window 1 02:00 – 12:00 UTC / Window 2 12:00 – 22:00 UTC / Window 3 20:00 – 03:00 UTCGroup 1 / 02:00 UTC / 12:00 UTC / 20:00 UTC
Group 2 / 05:00 UTC / 15:00 UTC / 23:00 UTC
Group 3 / 08:00 UTC / 18:00 UTC /
Migration Window Timings and Time Zone Translation can be found in the file below.
3.Scheduling Guidelines
Task / When / Task Name / Description1 / Any time prior to 21 days of migration / Prepare migration schedule / Customer to prepare the list of users to be migrated in a week 21 days in advance
2 / T-21 Days / Upload migration schedule / At T-21 days, the migration team should receive the migration schedule file with the confirmed migration date, window and group for the entire week 21 days hence. This is so validation on these mailboxes can be run by Microsoft and corrections made. Additionally this gives adequate time for Microsoft to schedule resources to be in place to either validate migrations or migrate users. The 21 day mark is not negotiable and no additions can be made after this point in the migration schedule.
3 / T-5 Days / Reschedule/Drop / Till T-5 days, customer is allowed to reschedule or remove mailboxes that are not ready to be migrated or which cannot be corrected in time from failed migrations. At T-5 Days, the final migration schedule is locked down and no changes are permitted beyond this time
4 / T-0 / Migrate Mailbox / Migration team starts the migration of mailboxes
3.1 OBC_Migration_Team_Lockdown_Dates_CY_2015
The Migration Team would not perform migrations on the dates mentioned in the attached document.
4.Migration Schedule Templates
The migration schedule must be provided to the migration team using the Migration Scheduling Template. This existing column information should not be modified ( the headers are case sensitive) and must contain this core data for migrations to be attempted.
Note:We need a separate set of Migration Schedule file for each Migration End Point for Exchange Hybrid, Simple MRS, Staged and IMAP migrations.
4.1Migration Schedule Templates for Exchange Hybrid Migrations
Exchange HybridMigrations can classified into two Migration Strategies/Approaches :
1)Direct/Standard mailbox migration to Office 365 using Office 365 Migration Tool.
This is the defacto standard for customers with smaller mailboxes (if most of their mailboxes are under 500 MB, this method is best suited). In this migration approach, the migrations are carried out by the Office 365 Migration Tool (which is installed in the Microsof Lab Servers). The Move requests are submitted by the migration tool using MRS and are carried out till completion.
2)SWRC mailbox migration using Powershell
Migrations that use SuspendWhenReadytoComplete (SWRC) method are carried out using PowerShell. Here, the move requests are created prior to the date of migration and are automatically suspended at 95% after replicating the mailbox content – this is known as the SWRC-Replication event.
The actual mailbox migration can be carried out at later stage by resuming the autosuspended move requests- This is known as the Cutoverevent.
Advantages:
- Very useful in case of migration of large mailboxes. If ‘most’ of the mailboxes in the Organization are larger than 500 MB in size, this migration method is most suitable one.
- Migration of large numbers (~4000-5000) in one migration event is also possible if we are getting a good throughput.
4.1.1Migration Schedule Template for Exchange Hybrid- Direct/Standard Migrations
Migration Schedule Legend:
- Migration Date – mm/dd/yyyy
- Migration Window – Window #
- Migration Group - Group #
- PrimarySMTPAddress – User’s Primary SMTP Address.
4.1.2Migration Schedule Template for Exchange Hybrid- SWRC migrations
Customers will have to publish two types of Migration Schedule files one for the SWRC-Replication event and the other one for the Cutover/Migration event.
Hybrid - SWRC Replication Schedule Template
Migration Schedule Legend:
- Migration Date – mm/dd/yyyy - this represents the Date when the SWRC-Replication would be started (or the date when the Move Requests are created for these mailboxes with the auto-suspend option selected).
Since the SWRC Replication events happen only over the weekends, the Migration Date in this file would always be that of the Friday of the week before the actual Cutover of these mailboxes.
The Migration Window and Migration Group would also be set to the same value for all the users in this file as they all will be started as a single SWRC-Replication batch.
- Migration Window – Window #
- Migration Group - Group #
- PrimarySMTPAddress – User’s Primary SMTP Address.
Hybrid – Cutover Schedule Template
Migration Schedule Legend:
- Migration Date – mm/dd/yyyy - this represents the Date when the Cutover of these mailboxes would take place.
This Migration Scheduel file will essentially contain the same mailboxes in the SWRC-Replication Schedule file of the previous Friday.
However the Migration Date for these mailboxes would be different, depending on which days of the upcoming week these users need to be Cutover. - Migration Window – Window #
- Migration Group - Group #
- PrimarySMTPAddress – User’s Primary SMTP Address.
4.2Migration Schedule Template for Simple MRS
The Migration Schedule Templates for Simple MRS are exactly the same as those for Exchange Hybrid Migrations. Please refer to Migration Schedule Template for Exchange Hybrid - Direct/Standard Migrations andMigration Schedule Template for Exchange Hybrid - SWRC migrations to access these files.
4.3Migration Schedule Template for Staged Migrations
Migration Schedule Legend:
- Migration Date – mm/dd/yyyy
- Migration Window – Window #
- Migration Group - Group #
- EmailAddress specifies the primary SMTP email address for users’ on-premises mailboxes. Email addresses must use a valid SMTP format, for example, . This attribute is required.
- Password is the password that will be set on the new Exchange Online mailbox. Any password restrictions that are applied to your cloud-based organization apply to the passwords included in the CSV file. A password has to have a minimum length of eight characters. This attribute is optional.
- ForceChangePassword specifies whether a user must change the password the first time they sign in to their new cloud-based mailbox. Use either True or False for the value of this parameter. Other values are invalid. This attribute is optional.
4.4Migration Schedule Template for IMAP Migrations
Migration Schedule Legend:
- Migration Date – mm/dd/yyyy
- Migration Window – Window #
- Migration Group - Group #
- EmailAddress specifies the user ID for the user's Exchange Online mailbox.
- UserName specifies the logon name for the account to use to access the mailbox on the IMAP server.
- Password specifies the password for the account in the UserName column.
4.5Migration Schedule Template for Cutover Migrations
The Cutover migrations are performed as a single batch and there is no Migration Scheduling Template for the same.
However it is important that the customer does not plan/schedule the Cutover Migration Start Date (Velocity Start Date in the Questionnaire) and the MX record change date on any of the ‘Lockdown days’ specified in OBC_Migration_Team_Lockdown_Dates_CY_2014 presentation earlier in this document.
4.6Migration Schedule Template for Lotus Notes Migrations
Migration Schedule Legend:
- Internet Address - This is the internet address of the user in the lotus domino environment
- Migration Date - This is the date on which the user will be migrated to cloud. This will fall on the T-0 day
- Migration Group - This is the name of the migration batch which is going on a particular day. This field can be used to uniquely identify a migration batch. We can give migration group name like W1G1\Pre-pilot, W2G1\Pilot, W3G1\Velocity 1 etc. The Window and the Group are mentioned as W and G, which specify the timeslot the migrations will start based on our scheduling windows and groups. For Example W1G1 means migrations will start at 02:00 UTC.
We can use this field for segregation of the user based on any other parameter also. Suppose we have two different departments going for migration on the same day, we can have two migration groups’ like- W1G1\Velocity 1-Management and W1G1\Velocity 1-Technical. These groups will part of the same batch.
- Has Blackberry– This can be left blank
- VIP – This can be left blank
- Domino BES Server – This can be left blank
- O365 UPN - O365 UPN is the user principle name of the user which uniquely identifies a user on cloud.
- O365 Usage Location– This will be end user usage location. Two letter country code should be mentioned in this column. Example given below:
US – If end user’s usage location is United States of America
GB – If end user’s usage location is United Kingdom
DE – If end user’s usage location is Germany
FR – If end user’s usage location is France
- O365 Display Name - This column will have the display name of the user on cloud. This will be used for troubleshooting purpose
- License Subscription ID– This column will have the license subscription details that will be assigned to the migrated user.
- InPlaceHold Identity – This can be left blank.
4.7Migration Schedule Template for Gmail
Migration Schedule Legend:
- Migration Date – mm/dd/yyyy
- Migration Window – Window #
- Migration Group - Group #
- Source Mailbox – This is the Primary Email Address of the Source mailbox in Gmail.
- Target Mailbox – This is the Primary SMTP address of the target mailbox on Office 365.
- Source Mailbox Size (in GB) – The source mailbox size in GB.
5.How to share migration schedule with migration team
The Migration Schedule is uploaded to the “Migration Education & Management” site within the SharePoint Online Portal that is provisioned for each customer.
Instructions about granting the Microsoft Teams access to this site can be foundwithin the site itself and can be obtained from the Onboarding Manager as well.
6.Scheduling Tips
- Always use the migrations schedule templates (attached above) for preparing the migration schedule. Please note that all the fields are mandatory which are present in the tempates.
- Always follow the migration scheduling guidelines while providing migration schedules to the migration team.
- For Lotus Notes migrations, please plan for at least 12 hour migration window because first 2- 3 hours are spent in the preparation activities, and rest 9-10 hours will be used for data migrations.
- Please batch up shared mailboxes along with users who have access on these shared mailboxes in the same batch.
- Please batch up all the delegates along with the mailboxes they have delegate access on in the same batch.
- For migration from multiple sites happening from multiple migration endpoints, please provide a separate schedule file for each endpoint.
- If migrating from Exchange 2003 (offline move), it is better to have a pre-defined cut off time so that migration team can stop the migrations at that time and send reports so that end users do not get impacted because of offline move.
- For a single migration batch, please try to spread out users from different source mailbox servers so as to attain the maximum data migration throughput. Do not put all users from the same mailbox server in a single batch, because that will act as a bottleneck in achieveing good migration data transfer throughput rate.
- If migrating from Exchange 2007/2010/2013 using a Hybrid approach and your organization has very large mailboxes, please use SWRC (Suspend When Ready to Complete) approach.
- Try to reduce the mailbox sizes of really large mailboxes before migrations.
- Please provide the complete Pilot migration schedule before the start of first batch of Pilot Migrations.
- Please provide the high level velocity migration schedule during the Pilot migrations.
- Do not make any last minute schedule changes.
Migration Schedule Policy